HOW TO DONATE

The arboretum and city are seeking used spades, trowels and shovels of all kinds through the end of May.

The arboretum began its collection at the season’s first plant sale, March 9, and will continue at the season’s other three sales: Saturday, April 6; Sunday, April 28; and Saturday, May 18. Each sale runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Arboretum Teaching Nursery. Read more about the April 6 sale.

The city is collecting shovels from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays at the city corporation yard, 1818 Fifth St.

So, what’s up with the old shovels?

The arboretum is collecting them at this season’s plant sales, and now the city of Davis is asking for shovels, too.

We knew they were for a sculpture that will be part of the “urban greening” at the east end of the arboretum, where the city and campus connect, but we didn’t know — until now — what the sculpture, a symbol of town-gown collaboration, might look like.

It will be a 16-foot-tall, vine-inspired gateway made out of twisted steel pipes and 400 used shovelheads. The cost is $40,000 — paid from the Municipal Arts Fund — not including the shovelheads! (And don’t worry about going without a shovel; in return for your donation, you’ll get a coupon from Davis Ace Hardware for 15 percent off a new shovel.)

“The diversity of shapes, sizes and rusty patterns on used shovelheads collected from the community will give the sculpture a richness and character that would be unattainable with new materials,” said the artist, Christopher Fennell of Alabama. With a background in engineering, he specializes in the creation of large scale public art from dramatic collections of cast-off materials.

The City Council authorized the funding on the recommendation of the Civic Arts Commission. Of course, neither knew what the sculpture’s theme would be — they just knew that they wanted a gateway sculpture at the junction of city and campus.

Fennell and his shovel idea emerged from a call for artist proposals — a call that drew 66 entries from around the nation. A committee of campus, city and community representatives chose Fennell.

Emily Griswold, director of horticulture and teaching gardens for the arboretum’s GATEways Project, said the theme “has special resonance because of all the shovels that have been used by staff, students and community members to plant the garden’s collections.”

GATEways — GATE stands for Gardens, Art, Teaching and the Environment — includes the California Native Plant GATEway Garden, which is part of the urban greening at the arboretum’s east end, behind the Davis Commons shopping center.  The $1.3 million campus-city project also takes in the Putah Creek Parkway between the shopping center and south Davis.

Primary funding comes from an $891,304 state Urban Greening Project Grant from the California Strategic Growth Council, using money from the voter-approved Proposition 84 (the Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006), which included $90 million for urban greening projects.

Follow Dateline UC Davis on Twitter.